AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES S1x018

"COME THE CONQUEROR"
Written by Eugene Son | Directed by Vinton Heuck

The Plot: Kang launches an attack on Manhattan, and local law enforcement and SHIELD fight back. The Avengers join the fray and begin taking out Kang's robots -- but the mechanoids soon reveal that they're only playing possum when they begin repairing thesmelves and press the attack. Nick Fury soon reveals to the Avengers that Kang's assault is not centered in New York -- he has launched similar assaults on tactical locations around the globe.

The Avengers regroup at their mansion, where Black Panther departs in a Quinjet to lead the defense of Wakanda. The rest of the team heads back out to battle Kang's robots while Iron Man stays behind to try and pinpoint Kang's location. Despite their best efforts, teh Avengers remain unable to turn the tide. When Captain America observes that the Avengers will need an army to win the war, Wasp suggests using Hank Pym's Ultron robots. Ant-Man and Wasp take Cap to a storehouse filled with Ultrons, where Ant-Man teaches the robtots the concept of violence.

Cap, Ant-Man, and Wasp rejoin Hulk, Thor, and Hawyeke in the field, now accompanied by the Ultron legion. Ant-Man and Wasp infiltrate one of Kang's attack ships, where Wasp blasts the controls, causing the vessel to lose its "anchor" with the twenty-first century and sending it back to the future. Armed with this knowledge, the Avengers and Ultrons begin boarding the ships and banishing them all back to the thirty-first century. The battle is won, but the war continues. Meanwhile, Iron Man finds Kang's command ship, cloaked in orbit over Earth.

Continuity Notes: At one point, when we're shown Kang's attacks at various locations on Earth, the Black Knight, riding on his winged steed, is shown defending London. I might've liked to see Captain Britain there as well, but no such luck. (Ineed, the scene feels like a big missed chance to show heroes around the world defending their homes. It would've been really cool, to see Sunfire fighting back in Japan, Alpha Flight in Canada, the Winter Guard in Russia, and so forth.)

The Ultron robots are seen flying during the battle. Prior to 2015's AGE OF ULTRON movie, I don't remember Ultron ever flying in the comics. Am I misremembering? Or is this the first recorded instance of Ultron(s) flying?

When Wasp sacrifices a Quinjet in battle, Ant-Man mentions that they cost about twenty million dollars each.

Do I Know That Voice? I can't remember if I mentioned this before (though I probably did), but Ultron is voiced by Tom Kane, best known to me as the narrator and Yoda in STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS.

My Thoughts: This episode is basically nonstop action, punctuated by brief scenes of the Avengers talking strategy. Notably, the show features our heroes fighting back against a massive-scale alien invasion of Manhattan more than a year before the 2012 AVENGERS motion picture gave us a similar spectacle on the big screen. And while I think the movie handled it better in terms of the scope and scale of such a thing, I do think the TV version feels more true to the Avengers' comic book roots in terms of the pacing and behavior of our heroes.

The final moment is a little odd, though. Iron Man spends much of the episode searching relentlessly for Kang, then finally throws in the towel, yelling, "Where on Earth are you?!" Which leads to an epiphany as he suddenly realizes that Kang isn't on Earth at all. Now, I get that I'm an omniscent viewer of this whole thing. I've known Kang was in orbit since the beginning of the previous episode. But why does Iron Man assume he's there? He's launched tons of huge attack ships; does Stark believe he has some hidden complex on Earth capable of holding all of them? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume he's in space (or at least in the air somewhere) and start searching up there? There's not really anyplace on Earth Kang should be able to hide such a massive armada, after all.

But again, maybe I'm throwing too much of my own knowledge into the preceding paragraph. Or maybe I just felt like I needed to type something, and that was the best I could come up with, since I rarely have anything to say about all-action extravaganzas. They're fun to watch, but hard to write about!

Though I should at least note that even as we're in the middle of the series' big Kang trilogy, we're also seeing seeds planted for an upcoming storyline. Ultron now understands the concept of violence, which will come back to bite the Avengers in a big way, four episodes from now. But let's not get ahead of ourselves! First we have the conclusion of the Kang storyline next week in "The Kang Dynasty".